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What if it happened to us?

Writer's picture: Torben MathiassenTorben Mathiassen

In August 2021, the German climate institute, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, released yet another report on the state of the Gulf Stream. And it wasn’t good. In fact, they concluded once again that the ocean current, so crucial to our climate, was at its weakest level in more than 1,600 years. Back then, just two years ago, there was no viable way to estimate when the Gulf Stream might be expected to stop. However, the report's authors were themselves concerned, as a disruption of the current could have significant consequences for our part of the world. These include the onset of ice ages, sea ice reaching as far as France, glacier formation in Norway and Sweden, extreme winter temperatures, storms, summer droughts, and, overall, a drastic change in our lifestyle in Northern Europe.


Danish (and international) scientists, journalists, and most of us ordinary people read the report with a certain degree of calm and a good dose of scepticism, wondering whether this was just another round of climate-fiction alarmism. Perhaps because the consequences of the Gulf Stream's collapse are so overwhelming that we prefer not to think about it? But likely also because our own DMI (Danish Meteorological Institute) was quick to argue against the German study and cast doubt on its validity. According to DMI's own research, there was no sign of a weakening of the Gulf Stream.


Personally, I haven’t lost much sleep over the fact that climate scientists’ measurements point to a significant weakening of the ocean current. But that report, along with earlier ones dating back to 2005, still inspired a train of thought that eventually led to my debut novel MALI—a climate thriller that pushes everything to the extreme. What if it happened to us? What if the Gulf Stream stops and we Danes have to flee south? For me, it became an interesting journey that forced me to think much more about the deeper consequences of becoming a climate refugee. In short, it’s not a situation I’d wish on anyone.


That’s why I might have been more concerned than most when the new Danish study from the Niels Bohr Institute and the Department of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Copenhagen was published in July 2023. New calculations, based on admittedly less-than-ideal data, showed that there is a 95% chance that the Gulf Stream could stop sometime between 2025 and 2095. Most likely in the years around 2057. That date hit me hard, because in my second book 3 Degrees Celsius, which was released in September 2023, I’ve taken on the challenging task of putting dates on the events in MALI. In 3 Degrees Celsius, the Gulf Stream stops around 2060–2062, which is remarkably close to the year the Danish scientists have calculated.


For most others, however, the news doesn’t seem to have significantly shaken daily life. After a day of coverage under the headline "Breaking News" on TV2 and a few days of mention in various media outlets worldwide, the serious implications of the study seem to have already faded from most people’s minds. But shouldn’t news like this spark some general curiosity about what changes such a collapse could bring to life as we know it? No matter how sceptical one might be about the study's findings? After all, it’s a peer-reviewed scientific result published in the prestigious scientific journal Nature, and it will have significant consequences for us all. If the Gulf Stream collapses, it would immediately lead to a temperature drop of 8-10 degrees Celsius in our part of the world. That might not sound like much, but when you compare it to the fact that during an ice age, the Earth's average temperature is only 3-4 degrees colder than today, it really puts things in perspective.


Shouldn’t we, at the very least, devote a bit of column space and a little time over lunch to talk about the world we might be facing? Or are we, as a species, so short-sighted and narrow in our view of the future that we simply can’t comprehend doomsday until we are in the midst of it?


Doomsday scenarios have been around for ages. Some are created by science fiction writers, some have been portrayed on Hollywood screens, others have been postulated by religious sects, and now it’s science’s turn. Perhaps it’s precisely because doomsday has been predicted so many times, and maybe because doomsday preppers are often mocked in everyday TV shows, that we are most inclined to ignore them. After all, we still have to remember to live while we can. But ignoring a likely scenario helps no one.


In the late 90s, the media was overflowing with news about a potential global IT breakdown at the turn of the millennium. In 2008, everything was about the financial crisis, which naturally had a significant impact on the lifestyle we all had at the time. In 2019, it was COVID-19 that had major consequences for our freedom of movement. None of these crises lasted, but they filled the media tremendously. The same is true for the climate changes happening further south, in Greece, southern Italy, and to a lesser extent in central Africa. We also hear about the many wildfires in Canada or Australia—those tangible events. What we don’t hear about, however, is what if it happened to us?


(This post is a translation of a post published in August 2023 on the Danish speaking version of my blog)


Photo: Pexels from Pixabay


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